


Newbie

by peasncarrots



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Max Centric, Summer, Takes place along s2-3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:33:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22659382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peasncarrots/pseuds/peasncarrots
Summary: Will seems to be avoiding Mike, and she soon learns that when Mike and Will aren’t on good terms nobody really is.
Relationships: Eleven | Jane Hopper/Mike Wheeler, Will Byers/Mike Wheeler
Comments: 5
Kudos: 97





	Newbie

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a while ago and never posted it. I was going to do much more in terms of development for Mike and Max but I don't feel like writing all of that. I suppose you could look at this as Mike/Max, but that wasn't necessarily my intention, I was mainly going for what the show tries to represent. They intimidate one another. I think Max is more conflicted by Mike though. Short ending whoops.

When she joins the group, it’s not because she wants to, it’s because she doesn’t understand why she can’t. 

He’s the leader, they say, the ruler. Mike Wheeler with his horrible glares and casual rudeness. Assertive wit and sardonic bark that’s often harsher than the bite.  _ Always  _ has something to complain over, to fuss about.  _ Always  _ running his mouth, butting in, providing his dictation even when it sorely has no benefit. Mike, with his indirect facade of constant irritability, annoyed tongue, low, unimpressed eyelids and grimacing lips. 

He supports all of them with his put off attitude, treats them like he’s delaying the Queen of England to be with them, like he’s wearing wet clothes in january, but she gets the worst of it before she’s even officially in. And she’s not sure how she became apart of it or if she ever did, but she knows she wasn’t something he permitted. Not willingly. 

It was a case of being outnumbered. He doesn’t want her here. In the group–the  _ party _ , the school, the town. “ _ Go back to california.” _

She doesn’t mind, really, Dustin says _don’t worry,_ _he was born an ass_ , Lucas says _that’s how he is,_ Eleven doesn’t take it seriously often, is rarely around to, and Will watches and sometimes tries to pretend like he's got room to care. She wonders why they spend so much time with Mike if they don’t enjoy it. 

Once, she’s vocal about it. 

_ “Why do you hang out with him then?” _

They look at her, then at one another. Dustin asks, “ _ What? _ ” and she lets it be. 

She thinks it might be her. He’s a boxer and sees her as more of a bag, in spite of what she really is. But how he is to her isn’t how he is to everybody. 

People have tones for each person they come around. She does. She’s different to Billy than she is to her mother. She’s harder and sharper to him because he’s the bigger dog and the instinct to defend herself will linger as long as they’re both there. She’ll refuse to respect him, she’ll snarl, but she knows who will win, so that’s all she does. 

She’s kind to Eleven, she’s annoyed to Dustin and Lucas, she’s unsure around Will, and she’s guarded to Mike. 

She’s soft to Eleven because Eleven knows how to distinguish all of three emotions in another person and two of them Max isn’t. Eleven isn’t normal and she’ll never be, and Max doesn’t know how to handle the sympathy she feels in regard to that, so she’s naturally sweet to her. She’s strong willed to Dustin and Lucas because she’s actively aware of the way they still behave specifically fondly to her. She can’t decide if she is revered or embarrassed–she doesn’t think she should be either, but she has poor knowledge of how to accept praise. She’s shifty and hesitant to Will for ways similar to Eleven’s, but he’s so awfully unapproachable, much more than Mike, and she feels he should always be the first to talk, but he never does. He’s right there, but constantly somewhere else, barely looks at her, and if he does it’s like she’s the most uninteresting thing in the world. She’s taut to Mike because anything that comes from his mouth concerning her is something she could certainly do without, and she feels no need to pursue his endorsement because he clearly is not gracious with it.

Max has to justify her right to exist in the group. She has to prove that she deserves a spot in it.

Mike is different. He doesn’t have to worry himself with how to fit into the circle because he didn’t join it, he invented it. He’s in the history, the creator. He’ll forever occupy the highest slot on the seniority list. She’ll be the lowest for a long time, and this can’t be news to him, but he keeps her in the dirt anyway.

He is capable of other emotions aside from hatred and disgust. She’s seen it. 

He’s so un–Mike to Eleven that it sickens her. It looks like a lie that even if she chooses not to believe, her predicament still won't matter. He  _ smiles  _ around her. El this, El that. When he’s not holding her hand he’s letting Will lead him through the woods and drink his soda, mouthing lyrics of rolling stones songs to him across the room in his basement, eyes deliberate, while the rain prevents her from leaving.

But it still surprises her when she sees him like that. Makes her get that he's a human being and the kind of face he puts on for Will or Eleven is not the same he does for her and the others.

It doesn’t mean it’s fake. It’s not a charade. Just because she doesn’t receive blushes and smiles and sugar from him doesn’t make it any less real when somebody else does. 

After the mall happens and she's not touching her face, has to rub her running eyes with her forearm because she's got Billy’s ruined blood on her hands, after Lucas went to track down his sister and Dustin was ambushed by his mother, Eleven’s gone away with Mike and she's cold in her summer clothes, Will comes over like a sheep without his flock and tells her he's sorry. 

He doesn't stutter, he's not awkward,  _ it's _ not awkward, but it's odd. New. 

He sits beside her on the curb and he's trembling, Joyce hasn't been found yet and Jonathan is standing nearby with Mike’s older sister speaking to men in uniforms and plastic suits, so she supposed there was only so much he could do. 

It's silent, and for a while she’s just with him. She studies the side of his face. He lets her and looks at the soggy cigarette end on the pavement with a watery gaze that has seen more than it was ever intended to. It might be the first time he’s gotten away from this thing with only memories, though remembering the upside down and it’s warbled counter parts doesn’t bleed you as hard as the fact that it really exists.

He starts to say something, and maybe because it's the one instance where he's directly spoken to her and only her, she really feels like the least she can do is listen, and though she knows they exist, she's not somebody that knows how to do more. 

“ _ He–it–”  _ He starts, like his tongue is too big for his mouth. He’s still watching the cigarette, as if he’s waiting for it to grow legs. “ _ It does things to you. _ ” 

It's a long time before he continues. 

“Until you're not really you.”

He looks up, but never returns her stare, likely because he can sense how heavy it is. His eyes aren’t as off or glazed as they can be, but the color below them remains, possibly darker than she supposes is really natural, though that word does not easily associate with the current reality. 

She hears Will breathe out unsteadily, as if there are butterflies in his lungs, and for a moment something differs well enough for her to make it out. She can’t observe it without it feeling vague, it isn’t as bold or sufficient to grasp and she can’t tell if it will last, but just then, it feels like he’s  _ there _ . Like she’s not invisible because she’s not a threat and he’s not blind to everything other than fear. 

Whether it’s because he’s finally like her, or she’s finally like him, she can’t tell. 

She believes he’s comforting her, but that he’s not doing it right. Though, just because it’s in a way she’s not used to doesn’t mean it isn’t genuine–and maybe he isn’t showing sympathy, maybe he’s explaining. Instead of saying he’s  _ there for her _ , he’s telling her why Billy did what he did, that there was a bad guy but he wasn’t it. Of course, she knows this, but still, it’s not what he says, it’s what’s behind it, how he’s showing her a part of himself that he doesn’t commune with, that he buries, in order to  _ console  _ her. It’s like he’s saying  _ it happened to me too _ . Admitting it,  _ talking  _ about  _ it  _ with  _ her _ , because a portion of something that used to be a uniquely ugly burden only to  _ him  _ is now  _ ours _ . Now, they’ve both lost something to it. 

She sits with him, or he with her, and eventually he leaves her for his mother, and when she's alone again she really feels alone. 

Mike and Eleven have apparently broken up, though what surprises her is that they really stay apart. It’s only awkward and tense for a little bit before it blows over, and then it’s odd only to her, as she’s never known them when they weren’t seemingly attached, or at least constantly reminding her and the others that they were. Eleven’s with her more now, smiles when she calls her Jane. 

Will seems to be avoiding Mike, and she soon learns that when Mike and Will aren’t on good terms nobody really is. 

They can’t hang out without it feeling stiff because they’re excluding one of the two, they can’t all sit at the same lunch table unless they are able to survive the awful tension, and somebody’s always as sour as whatever it was that the lunch lady cooked for them that day. 

If they try anyway, the result is colder than february. 

It’s strange fighting, not really much arguing or shouting at first but looks and stony profiles. She’s found that there are stages, and it depends on the severity of whatever it is they’re on about, but early on one seems to try and apologize to the other and fails, and then whoever holds out the longest wins. 

She never finds out  _ who _ –or what their problem was, nobody tends to really know anyway, and fortunately she’s graced with the inability to accurately determine it due to spending the last twelve years of their lives in california without consciousness of their existence, more so how to interpret their behavior well enough to conclude that Will lied to Mike about preferring peas over carrots through the phone and Mike figured it out. 

It has to be silly stuff, but she doesn’t think Mike and Will fight about silly stuff. It’s possible they do, or that they can work it out. It’s possible that it’s just about the same thing and it keeps surfacing. 

But if she ponders it for too long  _ she  _ feels silly because it very likely has nothing to do with her. 

Not daring to approach Mike, in the field one day she asks Will and of course, he doesn’t tell her. 

“Are you mad at him or something?” 

“What?” 

“Mike.” 

He looks at her, face hardening, and his eyes seem to burn her more than the sun. It vastly reminds her of Mike. She ponders the origin of it. 

Will’s eyebrows are tight. “Why?” 

“I’m not blind.” 

His stare lingers a bit longer before it drops to ridicule a long, coarse piece of grass. 

“No.” 

He picks the grass. “He’s mad at me.” 

She watches him for a moment, then looks over to where Mike was scowling at Lucas for making fun of his half tanned half grilled skin further up on the hill, and as she does, he meets her eyes. Briefly he looks very angry, and then he doesn’t. And then he looks put out. 

“He thinks I should grow up.” 

Max is lost. 

Later, Mike wins. 

Will goes and sits with him in his flattened bed of grass and she only notices after they seemed to have mended things because Dustin and Lucas were arm wrestling over an ant hill. 

She turns and sees Will smack Mike’s burned arm and spring backwards as Mike shouts and leaps onto him. Laughter splits his sides as Will rips out handfuls of grass and tosses it towards him but he’s already been tackled so he goes limp, plays dead, and Mike looks down at him, dark hair falling around his head like a short curtain protecting the cast of an entertaining play. Dustin and Lucas are watching now. 

They’re still for a moment, motionless. Silently, she can’t see him, but something flies upward as Will seems to spit a daisy into Mike’s face. 

He draws back like he’d been bitten, hands to his face, and Will surges up as if lying on coals and pounces on Mike while he’s vulnerable. 

They look like animals. 

And much like the remaining ordeal concerning Mike Wheeler’s party and his ways, she doesn’t fully understand how their resolution works, but at least it does. 

**Author's Note:**

> Tried to be a realistic here but you can see my bias coming through a bit. N e way thank you for viewing. I don't see many of these kinds of fics, and if I do they don't get much attention or likes. I really enjoy them though. Sometimes you need a change from the kissing I guess.


End file.
